


Ouroboros: Or, What the Thunder Said

by Chronolith



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Phenomenological Hermeneutics, Women Being Awesome, Xenobiology, it sounds cool and thats enough, jossed so very hard, who cares if physics don't actually work that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:58:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronolith/pseuds/Chronolith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jade is a space goddess. It's hard. It's hard and no one understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ouroboros: Or, What the Thunder Said

**= >Jade: Wake Up **

 

It's not that you wake up, because you have been awake this entire time--you've had to be to carry everyone and everything through into this new space-time continuum (reality?)--but that there is a sudden explosion of a world and universe around where previously there was none.

You have not created this world--universe--but you can feel it expand around you, gaining speed with every heartbeat. It feels bright and shiny and new in your mind. You let the planets go, allowing them to take their place within this unfurling reality wherever they maybe placed, wherever it is that they are called to take up their stations within this unfurling complexity of space and time. You hope that you will see Echinda again, but you let go of the hope. You have had to let go of several hopes to pull this off and preserve the greater whole. You think that you have pulled this off. There might be some complications, things not going according to plan, but you pulled everything and everyone that you meant to pull through with you.

And at last you can let everything _go_.

The breath rushes out of you with a whoosh until your lungs are empty. Until your very body is empty. Empty of the stress and the fear, the pain and the rage, the sinking despair and the desperate hope. You press the breath out of you, let it go, until your body and mind are as empty as the nothing that you had been hanging in, suspended for long sections of time (Dave could probably tell you precisely how long but you don't think you want to know) in that stepping down between universes--between realities.

It's only when you are completely empty that you remember how to look outside yourself to the universe beyond you. It's so tiny, this new thing that you and your friends have created/not created by exploding through one universe through to another. You can see the sparks across all the dimensions of the infraspace left by your excession into this universe. And that's what you and your friends are for this little, new, growing universe. An excession. You hope that you will be a good one. You can see the rift in the infraspace energy grid. That's how you find yourself thinking of the complex layering of dimensions and space one over another: energy grid. But the grid exists not in a two dimensions schema, but in a multifractal layering of dimensions layering and floating back in and over its self.

Where you once thought there were three dimensions you can now see twelve, and maybe the hazy outlines of a thirteenth. You didn't just punch through the fourth dimension--you had punched through all of them. Stepping down from your doomed and dying universe into a new one. Time and space travel all tangled into one extradimensional excession. Turtles all the way down, you think to yourself, and giggle.

You wish that you had something to write on because the maths for this would be beautiful. Striking in their simplicity, compelling in their complexity. So much for the old correspondence theory of truth. A does not equal A after all. A must be the relevant and complex signifier of the appropriate dimensional quadrant. Or, you think as you watched the tangled web of infraspace of this new universe fold and flower like a twelve dimensional fractal, "Truth" is not the correct propositions that are asserted of an 'object' by a 'human'

> (Troll? You'll have to ask about troll ontological philosophy. The entire grounding of metaphysics is now irrelevant, you think, given it's premised on too limited a dimensional framework. You feel like you have taken a tiny corner of a box and started pulling it away until you saw the real universe around you. And it is gorgeous.)

'subject' and then 'are valid' somewhere, in what sphere one knows not; rather, truth is disclosed of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds.(1)

Or, you think to yourself again in the quiet part of your mind that is simply taking everything in--the birth of this shiny new universe--in awe and wonder, turtles all the way down.

You leave the philosophy and the maths to one side and let your new senses of space float across this new terrain. Before you had ascended to your godtier you could sense everything on your planet, and maybe if you concentrating very, very hard you could sense everything on your friends' planets. But now, oh man, so cool. So very very cooollll. You can sense almost to the edges of this new universe, not that there are, technically, edges because infraspace doesn't work that way, but there's infraspace, and then there's the things inside infraspace and you can feel those things pop into existence.

Merging galaxies, exploding dwarf stars, tiny little budding cloud nebula. It is so cool. You kinda wonder if you could fly through that space like some great, huge starship and visit the furthest reaches of your new universe.

> (Actually, you know you could. Not that hard to drop to the six dimension of the infraspace and just sort of twist between the two lenticular galaxies and that one messed up little galaxy made of nothing but small magellanic clouds. Anything coming out of that part of space is going to be weird. You make a mental note to keep an eye on it.)

You could name yourself something ridiculous like _Shoot Them Later_ or _Frank Exchange of Views_ and have adventures. You giggle so hard you find yourself gasping for breath.

That pops you out of that alternative mental state that lets you see everything and anything in space. Lets you see space and its complicated multifractal dimensional variables. It's been long enough, you think, looking at the universe outside this world that you and your friends (all your friends! So exciting!) and now it is time to look at this world. You let your consciousness drop back inside your body so you can feel and hear and smell and see.

It's when you let yourself back into your body that you realize that something about how you ascended into your godtier has had ... consequences. For one thing your sense of smell is a lot stronger than you ever remember it. Like, you think you must have about a million of more smell-sensitive sense receptors than you used to. So many in fact that you are pretty sure you smell Dave but your space senses tell you that he's 800m to the southwest of you. Something is definitely up.

You open your eyes and have a little bit of a freak out when you realize that you can't really see the shades that your memory tells you should be there. The green of the trees all blends into one cloud of moving green. But the smell of the trees is so much more than it ever was. And the sounds. You lose yourself for a moment in these new body sense of smell and sound. The world opens up around you in ways it never did before. With the tiny differences of smell and sound denoting depth and complexity the way your sight (which was never very good anyway) used to.

Also, is that a troll moving towards you? You think it is. It smells humanoid but not human. Familiar in ways that you ought not know but there are tiny memories there of this copper, earth, and cinnamon smell. Something is tugging at your memory, pesterchum conversations, time shenanigans, oh! Oh right! That one. When the figure breaks the treeline you sit up, enjoying the feeling of your spine stacking itself vertebrata by vertebrata. You give this new troll a brilliant smile.

"Hi Tavros!" That makes him stumble a little, his scent shifting a little from copper, earth and cinnamon to copper, earth, and nutmeg you think. Copper and earth must be Tavros-smell. You file that information away for later.

"Jade, uh, I don't mean to, um, startle you?" Tavros says as he moves slowly towards you. His skin an interesting deep brown, you watch his high cheeks change from brown to deeper brown as he searches for the words to talk to you. "But, um, I think you. Well, we because I don't remember looking like this when I was alive. Have changed. Like. Physically."

You cock your head to the side. "I know my sense of smell is a lot better." You wrinkle your nose. "But my vision is worse."

He sits down next to you, though still a little ways off. Like he wants ground in case you get mad. The nutmeg smell to Tavros is now much stronger. "I, uh, don't mean. Um. Senses? But," Tavros takes a deep breath. "Like don't get mad at me but I think your ears have changed because I don't remember you having ears like that when you were a little wiggler. In fact they look like your lusus' ears."

Your hands fly to the top of your head. You do. You totally have Bec's ears. Well, that certainly explains a lot of things, but you aren't really sure you'd file this under 'cool,' more like 'oh _shit_.'

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," (1930)
> 
> notes: So I was going to turn this entire an entire thing. But then I spent a lot of time in rural Alaska and Russia doing fieldwork sans internet and completely lost the thread of the story. Someday I might come back to it, but for now, not so much.


End file.
